Corusca

These recent short vacations and some other events have changed my view on several things. Not really getting into detail here, as the majority of my insights are irrelevant to most reading this.

So. I had very nice, yet short, vacations with my fiancé in the snow (photos are up). I’d never actually made a snowman, or been in a snowball fight, or riden a sled through the snow. All new experiences in very good company made these vacations to remember. I’m glad we took the trip. I kept feeling sucky, by always going to the same places and having the same routine, aside from a thing or two.

Speaking of which, I really enjoyed Friday night’s dinner (well, just tea for me as I’d explode into a million pieces if I ingested any solids), with Dave, Vanessa and Inês, as well as my sweetie, of course. Was really needing some time outside, and am only sorry that I may have vented about things, a bit too much. Ah well. Thanks for the invite, guys. Was a much needed, change of scenery and company. :)

Also, had a nice time on a friend’s birthday dinner, talked to a few people I don’t see much, including one of our guild’s mages who volunteered to level his priest when I mentioned our lack of healers being a problem. I’m slowly becoming an unofficial ‘recruitment officer’ for healers for my guild though it’s not my job at all. Everyone was wearing some sort of mask to celebrate the Carnival, and I also took some photos which I’ll upload shortly (only had time to take care of two food photos). The cookie cake was really yummy (gotta try making one sometime!), and I only refrained from eating more because I’d burst. :P

While I was out, I read a tiny bit more of GRRM’s A Storm of Swords. I need to free up some time for ‘myself’, to read more, and play games other than World of Warcraft. I’m not quitting WoW or anything, but between emos, drama, and other constants, the most fun I’ve had in the last week was on a PUG with nice people (though not all great players) in Utgarde Keep with my Retribution Paladin.

And it’s not just because i’m playing a different class (though admittedly, I’m enjoying melee/holy DPS a lot), it’s because I’m playing something different. Naxx has been mostly boring lately. I’ve noticed lack of focus even on some farm bosses, and before I was only on ‘daisies mode’ during most of the trash (exception to Gargoyles and other more ‘complicated’ stuff). I don’t screw up on my functions or anything like that, it’s simply boring and doesn’t really require 100% focus most of the time.

I’ve been wanting to play other games for a while, and it was even one of my resolutions for 2009. Considering my laptop will have to go to get repaired due to constantly not booting on the first try (sometimes only at the 10th try), I will be stuck with either a desktop that’s not mine (though a decent one for WoW), or my old laptop for a month or so. And I’m not really happy about that prospect. That might mean me playing with horrible FPS and graphical settings to a minimum, and although I endured it on occasion, during the TBC, doing boss encounters like Vashj with a crappy frame rate was not fun.

What better time than this to maybe play a bit more Xbox 360? I’ve barely played The Force Unleashed, Assassin’s Creed and GTA4. I feel like playing RPGs but sadly, we don’t own any non-Japanese RPGs for the XBox and I’m fairly allergic to JRPG’s turn-based combat system. Also, a good time to catch up with my reading, since my pile o’ unread books has grown. I did manage to finish reading The Tipping Point recently, and can reccomend it to those who enjoy the occasional non-novel book from time to time. now reading some manhwa, Chunchu vol. 2, and George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords. All very slowly.

I’ve been having lots of decoration ideas for our house. We’ve recently placed some japanese and chinese paintings on the walls of our hall, a sort of asian-looking ‘rug’, and the lose cable we had there for ages is finally solidly stuck to the wall. But after that we haven’t done anything else decoration-wise. We do need to tidy up some stuff, like the chaos that is our office, and try to organize our room so it doesn’t look like someone grabbed all our clothes and threw them in the air, leaving them where they landed. But to decorate we need time to shop and bricolage, and we have more pressing matters to attend.

Like taking care of a ton of stuff for the wedding, such as finishing the wedding invitations, order some stuff from an online store for the atendees’ gifts, going to the Civil Registry soon (maybe next week?), getting my passport done soon, checking out sites and contacting travel agencies to see what there is for Thailand for our honeymoon (still not 100% decided but we seem to both be leaning toward it even if its slightly more expensive than, say, Mexico), and a million other things. Planing a wedding? Exhausting.

Before I head off to my mini vacations, I leave you with the Mass Effect 2 trailer BioWare has recently released. Pretty awesome… and mind boggling.

Have a nice rest of the weekend.

So, what have I been up to lately?

Wedding invitations. We made the non-printed part for about 10 of them and now we’ve paused because unlike what we’d heard before, we should only give the invitations like 2 months before the wedding (and 1 month to confirm) so ‘people don’t forget to confirm’. Imho, if someone forgets to say something (Yes/No is pretty basic :p ) it’s beacuse they don’t give enough of a damn to go, but that’s just my opinion so we’re going to start sending them in March. However, the confirmations will have to be more than just a month before because we have to confirm the number of people with the farm three weeks before the date. And if people cancel we have to find replacements for them, and doing that in just one week would be problematic.

Anyway, I hope we can make some more invitations this weekend because we’re at less than 20% to done on that. They look very… handcrafted, but we’re hoping people will think ‘aweee and they made them themselves!’ instead of ‘omg, they are HORRIBLE!’. :P

Plans for this four-day weekend?

Going to a friend’s birthday party tomorrow.

Hoping to go out to Serra da Estrela from Sunday to Tuesday. Hoping the weather is nice, meaning, snow and Sun at the same time. :p Mustn’t forget to: get warm shoes so my feet don’t require amputation, charge my CyberShot and empty its memory card, get a book to read, take some TV shows episodes on a laptop.

And now, to head out to a dinner with some friends. Thanks for the invite, Dave! I really needed to go out tonight, so my head wouldn’t explode with so much idiotic stuff I had to read this afternoon.

Anywya, if I don’t write anything else, have a nice weekend, folks!

Sharing some links of cool stuff I found in the last couple of days.

Gardening Mama screens. Lots of images from the upcoming Gardening Mama game. I miss playing Mama games, so even if gardening isn’t as cool as cooking (for me at least), I’m wanting to play this asap.

Remember Barack Obama’s ‘Hope’ poster? Well this is a list of several geek posters similar to that one. From R2, to Spock, to Cylons. Take a pick.

This next link probably isn’t safe for work. It’s a list Gizmodo put together of vibrating Valentine’s gifts. Bzzzz!

Wired made a hands-on article about BioWare’s new RPG, Dragon Age: Origins. I. Want. To. Play. It! Still several months away though. *sigh*

Had to mention this. Don’t divorce them. I’m getting married to my boyfriend in a few months and can’t see where the possibility for gay people to get married would diminish our boy-girl wedding in any way. Don’t be idiots, let people be happy with who they love.

Also coming from Wired is an article on the different uses for Twitter, other than simple micro blogging. Makes me want to write an article of my own on the applications of Twitter in the field of domotics.

And that’s all for now. have a pleasent day. Seems that it will be a sunny one if you are in the general Lisbon area here in Portugal. :)

Been dealing with a ton of stuff lately. The wedding invitation’s digital part is done. Lacking the bricolage part which I hope can be done start to end until Saturday. We’ll see. That reminds me, I need to mail a lot of people asking for s-mail addresses. :P

Anyway, been slowly watching some TV shows, like Fringe, and House, and really need to get the new Bones and Battlestar Galactica episodes. Also, someone recently pointed me to Genji Monogatari Sennenki, based on Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji which is considered the world’s first novel. The anime’s character design and art seem stunning from all the images I’ve seen. Also, it seems like a nice enough point to restart watching complete Japanese animation series (the last one I did was Gankutsuou – The Count of Monte Cristo and that was ages ago), since it’s only 11 episodes long.

I’ve also been introduced to Sirenia’s new album, among others, and I’m hooked. Hadn’t heard new symphonic metal I liked this much since I found Diablo Swing Orchestra (which is a different style of metal, being symphonic and progressive simultaneously), and that was almost a year ago. I’m enjoying the epic feel of a lot of the tracks, and some even remind me of awesome Shoujo Kakumei Utena duels, which is usually a good sign, considering the Utena soundtrack is so very cool. On a side note, from what I read about Sirenia’s ex-members, they seem to have some difficulty maintaining a female lead vocalist. :P

Games-wise I’ve continued playing WoW and the last couple of raids were very pleasant – no whining, no drama, and new people learning new stuff and us doing new bosses at the same time (10 man Loatheb down with 2 raiding newbies in our group – good job! :) ). The drama level is down possibly since Whiny Drama Bitch has sunk her tooth into epix, being the only Resto Shammy online on the last raids I’ve /who <name of her new guild>’ed, and also since our guild forum is down, thus temporarily shutting down her preferred drama stage.

I’ve also been playing a bit of Guild Wars now and then, and got my Assassin to level 7. I’m liking the asian setting of Factions, except for the part where Assassin’s seem to have been starved into a stick figure, where you can’t change your character’s ‘fatness’ into something that looks a tad more healthy.  Since I’m badmouthing that part of the character creation (why do I have to look like a starving orphan, m8s? :P), I might as well state that, slight things aside, it’s one of the things I enjoy the most in the game. I’ve been messing around with a ton of looks for several of the classes, and I have to say you can make very cool-looking characters. A lot more than in WoW – in fact the whole 3D graphical engine of GW is superior to WoW’s, the UI usability less so. I might post some screenshots of my experiments online soon so you see what I’m talking about. I was glad they hadn’t removed the bald option for female hairdos since the beta test, because female Monks look a lot more awesome if they are bald. Yeah, I’m happy to be able to remake my beloved Monk beta test character, and even keep the same name. \m/

Whiny Drama Bitch has decided to ’stop raiding with us’, and has taken her Restoration Shaman (the only one we had in our guild :P) over to her boyfriend’s guild. Something I predicted the moment I learned she was leaving.

Funny things about this:

She left her ‘beloved main character’ Warlock with us – y’know, the one she insisted over and over was SOOOO much more fun to play than her Shaman. The Resto Shaman she was sick of, curiously enough not long after our Raid Leader, not succumbing to her boobley charms, deciding to take the Tier 7 gloves over her (he was ahead on our Suicide Kings list). Also, this after posting among other things that, for instance, Plate wearers shouldn’t be allowed to bid on mail items. Yeah, because surely the extra tiny bit of armor in some mail items would make all the difference to a Holy Paladin. I played one for years. It doesn’t.

Anyway, doing some investigative work (still ongoing because I do love to see that I get stuff right about drama-prone people in WoW almost all of the time), I realized she’s on her boyfriend’s guild with her Resto Shaman – something that was listed on their site, along with Warlocks as ‘highly wanted’. The difference here being that while the only other two Resto Shamans in that guild are the same rank as hers, and one of them according to WoW census, is a recent member of that guild, being there for less than a month.

She was very unsatisfied with our guild’s new looting system, Suicide Kings, because she prefered the old /roll one, and she is now in a guild that uses a Furious raid system – something that seems pretty similar to DKPs. Makes perfect sense. While this may seem like a flaw in my reasoning that she switched guild to get more ph4t lewtz fast, do remember what I said about the two Resto Shamans back there – they have the same guild rank as she does, so they are either socials, or applicants. Edit: someone just told me they are recruits because all that have that rank have been in the guild in less than two months. And I was wondering why her Warlock was still with us? Their forum clearly states that trial members aren’t allowed to have alts in the guild.

I’ll have to ask one of the officers in her new guild which one is she, just to confirm things. Also, remember me mentioning that she wanted to play her lock so badly because she was so much more into it? Guess what? The three Warlocks in her new guild are all a rank higher than she is, which indicates that they are likely active members who show up to raid more often than her two trial Resto Shammy loot contestants. Not only that, but according to WoW Census, they ain’t new kids on the block, and have been in the guild for a long time.

If she’d have been honest about her intentions, I couldn’t care less what the hell she did and I wouldn’t be writing this wonderful post with my findings. But when someone states that she doesn’t care about the loot (let’s admit it, everyone does at least a little bit, even casuals, much less people who are logged in most of the day like she was), does a bucket full of drama, and then does a move like this, I really have to mention it. And investigate just how much bullshit she was telling the guild these past weeks.

Did I mention I hate liars? Because I really do. ;)

Don’t missinterpret me, I’m glad she’s gone, only she really isn’t because she left her other level 80 character with us, and the bitching may continue. Always in the ‘I didn’t want to say anything, but…’ manner, or the ‘I don’t really mean to intrude in this matter, but…’ way. I wonder if playing the innocent chick really does wonders for her popularity with the boys. Given how she has some male members under her influence (no pun intended :P), I’d say it’s at least partially working.

I’m immune to boobs (mine are totally awesome though! ;) ), I’m immune to clueless chick act (which I’ve seen be used by manipulative drama queens before), and I’ve succesfully resisted her Bitch Attacks From Hell ® without verbally turning her into a simple puddle of pseudo whiney bitchiness on the virtual floor of World of Warcraft, thus avoiding more QQ and… DORAMAAAAAAAAAA! (imagine ‘Dorama’ said with a really grave male japanese voice, so you get the full effect of that sentence.)

I’ve seen something simillar happen way back, in another guild, except that particular girl wasn’t a bitch. She was just the attention whore part of the problem, and thankfully our WDB at least has the decency not to moan/scream like she’s having an orgasm every time she gets an epic, something that the other chick did. It’s people like these that sometimes give female gamers a bad reputation. And I, of course, frown upon that.

If you think I’m being paranoid with a lot of the stuff I wrote here – I’m not. I play WoW for almost 4 years now, since the week the European servers opened, and between what I’ve seen people do during those years in WoW, and what I’ve seen in several other online comunities (IRC chat rooms, forums, etc.) for even longer than I’ve been in WoW, I can read divas and drama queens a mile away. Heck, I predict what they’re going to do pretty accurately. And I sure as hell have a ton of stuff baking my text up. If you’re in doubt, feel free to check out the sites I’ll mention on my thank you notes yourself.

On a last note I’d like to thank the WoW Armory, WoW Census, Google, and the other zillion sites I’ve visited while conducting this ongoing investigation. Also, the LOLcats site which allowed me to create this post’s work of art imagery. Also, special thanks to the couple of RL friends who’ve contributed to my findings.

CSI: Las Vegas’ Grissom, and AFK Gamer would be proud.

(PS – Maybe there’ll be a part III. Maybe.)

I shall tell you a story of what’s been going on in my guild in the last few weeks. Note that this first part (out of 2, if nothing more noteworthy happens), was written on Monday, a time where some events had not yet happened. I’ll leave you in suspense until the final part of the post. Enjoy!

The least nice thing about WoW right now is the on-going (and seemingly never ending) guild drama. During the last 10 man Naxx raid, which was mostly going nicely and in a relaxed way, there was an argument on guild chat, which kind of ruined the nice night. For me anyway. That and the fact that someone, let’s call her Whiny Drama Bitch (because all three words fit her so nicely in-game), decided to turn a joking around moment I was having in raid chat with a friend, into yet another one of her bitch moments.

I’ve been making an effort not to reply what comes to mind, even if I excluded all the swearing, so I let it end there and just whispered one of the guild leaders about it, and logged out after the raid was done.

Previously on the raid having said something else about some loot a healer wanted for offspec, which she playing her pew pew class stated ‘it’s for healing’ in what I think was an attempt to get him charged for the item on his main spec so he’d go down on the Suicide Kings list. Despite him already having a decent 2h for healing (all it would take for her to keep her mouth shut was a simple inspect) and not really wanting that offhand for anything but pew pew purposes. Thankfully the GM, counted it as offspec gear. In this situation I also refrained to ask her if she was wearing her bandage gear because 5 of her items didn’t have hit rating, and 2 of those had spirit, which makes it obvious that it’s healing gear. /sarcasm But once more I kept from replying because I am SICK of drama. Sick.

Seems that the day prior to these events, someone stated in guild that she causes a bad guild environment (yay him!), which apparently lead to whining (surprise!), and then, the following day, the aforementioned bitching. I’m starting to wonder if she’s another one of those chicks who play, then turn into divas because they think having boobs and playing video games turns them into godlike creatures. Dear Whiny Drama Bitch (WDB), I’m also a carrier of boobs (very nice boobs I assure you!), and I don’t feel the need to perform attention whoring (’no one ever helps me, booohooohooo!’) or to throw diva fits. Get a shrink and stop being fucking annoying. Thanks.

Never have I added someone in one of my guilds to my ignore list. Not even Annoying Rogue, who I muted in vent (over a year ago) because he talked so much I couldn’t hear the Raid Leader’s instructions. Never. But if she throws another one of her fits, I’ll have to do that, because if I don’t I’ll start replying what she needs to hear for a while now. And I can’t promise I won’t swear like a sailor if I do, because it’s becoming a bit too much.

Meantime, the WDB has (partially) left the guild. But I’ll leave you in suspense for part II. Stay tuned!